The Lover From an Icy Sea (42 page)

*  *  *

The last of the Swedish passengers disembarked. The ferry, Kit calculated at a glance, had been relieved of easily two-thirds of its human and vehicular cargo. The same practiced hands that had brought the ferry into its docking station unleashed it, coiling heavy hemp rope in piles beside thick, landlocked pylons. The ferry’s propellers turned just enough to move it forward, though not enough to result in a disturbing wake. The ship moved out to sea and—Kit surmised—in the direction of Bornholm. He turned his head away from the Swedish mainland. Daneka still stood at the bow. She was facing him directly and—Kit noted with enormous relief—smiling. He took her smile as reconciliation, walked to the stairs joining hurricane deck to main deck, and descended to stand beside her.

She put both arms around his waist. “Hey there, sailorman.”

He looked at her. As the ferry turned up the RPMs and headed out to sea, breaking through waves and sending saltwater spray into both their faces with each return of the bow to the surface of the water, he looked hard at her. However tenuous her genetic tie to the Vikings of old Denmark, something deep within her responded to the pounding of the waves, the breaking of the surf, the forward trajectory—always out, out and away. Always searching for new lands, new adventures, new challenges and conquests, always something new. She couldn’t help herself—it was in her blood. The thrill of novelty and uncertainty were to her a necessary fix. So long as there was sea, she would never stick to land; so long as there were storms, she would eschew shelter; so long as there was security, she would be a breaker of chains.

He loved her—and, in that instant, resolved to drop, once and for all, any expectation or even wish that he might one day tether her ambition to his. The choice, he knew, was not, had never been, would never be, his.

“
How long now till we arrive at—?” He hesitated to say the name of the village, knowing he’d butcher its pronunciation.

“
Rønne?” she asked with another smile. “Even less time than it took us to get from Copenhagen to Ystad. Now, c’mon, darling. Let me hear you say it. R-ø-n-n-e. The ‘r’ is like the French ‘r,’ and the ‘ø’ comes very close to the German ‘ö’—you know, “o” with an umlaut. Now pucker up those little lips and say it—R-ø-n-n-e.”

“
R-ø-n-n-e,” Kit tried. He thought he’d succeeded, but he also knew that Daneka was a perfectionist. And so, it came as no surprise to him when she reached up with one hand and squeezed his cheeks together.

“
Almost, but not quite. Let’s work a bit on that “ø,” shall we?

Try as he might, it all came out sounding too much like the dipthong in ‘Gœthe’ for her satisfaction. If the German ‘ö’ was as close as he’d ever get to the Danish ‘ø,’ so be it; as long as he could make himself understood, he was happy. Daneka’s perfectionism, he figured, was her problem.

“
Well, darling, we’ll just have to work on it. At least you’ve got the ‘r’ down like a real champion.”

“
Like a real champignon, you mean.” Kit smirked.

“
Yes! From now on, you’ll be my
champignon
.” She snuggled up to him. “And when do you think we could have our next breakfast of
champignons
?”

He reached down with the tip of his finger and touched the tip of her nose. “Just as soon as we can rinse the salt off that delightful little schnoz of yours.”

Daneka’s mouth opened slightly just as her eyes half-closed. She just as quickly opened them again and began looking around mischievously—for what, he wasn’t certain. He, himself, made a quick survey of their immediate surroundings. There was no one else on the deck with them, no faces peering out from behind the windows of the main cabin and no one on the hurricane deck. The captain’s view from just above the handrail enclosing the navigating bridge, however, was unobstructed—and so, presented an obstacle. Daneka seemed to reach the same conclusion at the same instant. An obstacle for her, however, merely represented a challenge. Her eyes made a more thorough inspection of the deck on which they stood, then seemed to hone in on a target. She walked over and picked up a nylon tarp; returned to Kit; opened it; draped it around Kit’s shoulders and then around her own.

“
We need to try to stay dry,” she said with a smirk. Her sudden awareness of a condition that had clearly not bothered her in the least since their ferry had left Copenhagen was one that Kit found amusing—and so characteristically Daneka.

She’d solved one problem, only to be confronted by another. The tarp had grommets, but no cord; hence, no way to secure it—another challenge in need of another solution.

“
Hold these ends together, will you, darling?” Kit did as she asked, keeping both Daneka and himself thoroughly concealed from the neck down. He sensed Daneka stooping over slightly and reaching down for something, then finding it, then shifting her weight from one leg to the other. She rotated both of their bodies forty-five degrees so that Kit’s back, shoulders and head presented a screen between her and the windows on the navigating bridge. She then brought her hands up and out from under the tarp just under Kit’s. With one hand, she pinched two of the grommets together; with the other, she threaded the pair of holes with some material whose provenance was still a mystery to Kit. Only when she’d managed to get the material through the grommets and had begun to tie a knot in it did Kit understand her ingenuity: in lieu of cord, she was using her panties.

Is there no end to this woman’s inventiveness?
he wondered. Why would I even bother to look at other women—for whatever reason? Not only has she thought through and overcome two foreseeable obstacles. She’s also anticipated a third in the form of a fine silk barrier—and promptly removed it.

Apparently satisfied with the security of her work, Daneka turned around to face Kit, then stepped back slowly until her back was up against the handrail. Unknown to him—but apparently not to her—there were two footrests hard-welded precisely where the starboard and port sections of the ferry met at the bow. She stepped up on them so that her face was on a level with his face, her feet perhaps three or four inches higher than his feet. He felt her hands underneath the tarp as they undid his belt buckle, pulled down his zipper, pushed his jeans down to his knees, then reached for the waistband of his shorts. She smiled at him a third time as she blindly, yet expertly, overcame the final obstacle—his shorts—and slid them down to join his jeans.

He felt those same hands as they hoisted up her skirt, then took him and guided him in. He slid into her easily as she placed her lips on his. Another pair of lips pulled him on, in, and up. Only once he was fully inside her did those lips cease pulling.

Kit could do virtually nothing from his standing position but stand. From her slightly raised position on the footrests, however, Daneka could bend—then re-extend—her legs several inches. The tent-like structure of the tarp gave them the necessary cover. To an outside observer, they appeared to be stationary. On the inside, however, Daneka would take complete possession of the mechanics facilitated by her four or five inches of flexibility. She became mistress of a vertical movement almost too sublime for two mere human bodies to withstand as she raised up, then settled back down again, and again, and again.

In the absence of a natural partner to inform her rhythm, she found the rhythm of the sea and of the ship’s blunt movements upon it. As the ferry would rise on a swell, she would slide down on Kit. As the ferry would slide back down on the other side of that same swell, she would rise. Occasionally, the ferry would slam; she would slam with it.

Whether it was ultimately the slide or the slam was no one’s fault, least of all the sea’s—to which swells came naturally and abundantly. On the last but one, Daneka’s body rose up and slipped accidentally off Kit. They fought frantically—if blindly—to find each other again. Just as she felt him start to enter her, the ferry slid down the backside of a swell and into a particularly deep trough. She mimicked the ship’s movement, raised her feet up off the footrests, encircled his chest with her arms and grabbed his hips with her thighs. His hands immediately slid down under her to lend support. Relieved of much of the burden of her own body weight, she had only that of her legs to worry about—and stomach muscles strong enough to keep them suspended almost indefinitely. She released his hips, spread her knees as wide as she could, pushed her abdomen up against his, and came. When she felt him come just seconds later deep up inside her, her vaginal muscles became a bellows, an accordion, clenching and unclenching, drawing in air, and him, and then expelling the air again, and seemingly drawing him deeper in with each contraction.

Daneka buried her face in Kit’s neck so as to muffle the sound. With no place to bury his face, Kit gritted his teeth.

When they’d both calmed down enough to see their situation and their surroundings with something like lucidity, it was not shame or embarrassment they felt, but only the tightness and rightness of their love. Their faces and lips awash in salt spray, their hair hanging in wet and scraggly strings, they kissed with a passion that would’ve done honor even to Balboa—and the captain’s salute in the form of a long blast from the ship’s horn did absolutely nothing to deter or dampen that passion.

These Danes
, Daneka thought.
They love to watch almost as much as they love to do.

*  *  *

Disassembling their litte tent proved to be no challenge for someone as talented as Daneka. She simply worked in reverse as if she’d memorized every manoever from the moment she’d first spied the tarp—and ran the film back to front. On the matter of the obstruction that had not long ago existed in Kit’s shorts, but which had conveniently disappeared, she improvised. What had formerly been hard, dry and stubborn was now soft, wet and malleable. She swiped her hand once across his lower abdomen like a squeegee, then made an “O” ring out of thumb and forefinger for the same purpose but on another part of him. She then brought her hand up through the opening in the tarp out of which their two heads were sticking, licked it, and suggested with a gesture that Kit do the same. He did.

She then put her lips on Kit’s again, forced them open with her own and tickled his tongue with hers in a long, liquid kiss. The captain acknowledged this second kiss with two short blasts from his horn. Without releasing Kit’s mouth from her own, she reached back down, then brought her entire arm out from under the tarp and gave the captain the ‘okay’ sign with thumb and forefinger.

She and she alone celebrated the knowledge that she’d just used the same thumb and forefinger as an “O” ring for a somewhat more sublime purpose.

*  *  *

The tarp returned to its original location; Kit and Daneka returned to their original state of dress, the continents not having shifted appreciably in the course of Kit’s and Daneka’s minor tectonic rumblings; and the captain, if amused, still holding to his original course—the island of Bornholm now came shortly into view. Small fishing boats flying miniature Danish flags bobbed here and there over the wake of the
Villum Clausen
as it progressed into port at Rønne. The captain once again executed a one hundred and eighty-degree turnabout in bringing the ferry to its docking station, and a different—if equally masterful—set of deckhands delivered the ship to a secure berth.

Kit and Daneka walked back to the main cabin to retrieve their luggage, then disembarked with the remaining passengers. Rønne was a village: hence, the lone service station doubled as the lone car rental agency and was within walking distance of the docks.

Daneka took care of the paperwork while Kit got the car and loaded their luggage. Within minutes, they were off and driving down a two-lane country road up and around the perimeter of the island.

It was late afternoon by the time they reached Svaneke. Perhaps because the village was on the windword side of the island, any remnants of fog had long since blown off. The sky was a clear, if muted, blue. The colors of the other houses in Svaneke—half again the size of Rønne—were likewise muted: flax and goldenrod; ochre and jonquil. Kit didn’t wish to take this as an omen. It was what his growing knowledge of Daneka had prepared him to expect. To be muted was, quite simply, in the Danish conception of things—even in high summer.

Chapter 53

“
I’ll get the bags. You go in and turn on the lights.”

“
Thank you, darling.

Kit took their luggage out of the car and put it on the ground. This, he decided, was a Camel moment. If you can’t love the Lucky you love, love the Camel you’re with, he thought to himself with a chuckle. He took one out, lit it, then sat down on what appeared to be a dry-stone wall to look for a long moment at Daneka’s cottage. “Storybook” was the word that came immediately to mind.

He hadn’t yet seen enough of the local architecture to know whether it was authentically Danish or something more eclectic. She might’ve bought it as a “fixer-upper”—or she might’ve had it designed according to whim, had it then built for her. In any case, he thought it more beautiful than any Mainline or Greenwich mansion, any Upper East Side townhouse or Brooklyn Heights brownstone, any Great Neck or Bedford Hills estate—than any Italian villa, even, in Porto Fino or along the Lido.